


No Refuge in Hell

by Murf1307



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Gen, The Refuge, violence against a minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's first time in the Refuge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Refuge in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> written ages ago for my friend, in celebration of her finishing her final paper for a class.

He’s only fourteen when they catch him.  He’s only fourteen, and they don’t care.

He goes to the Refuge.

Maybe he shouldn’t have punched that cop, he realizes, when the man called Snyder hauls him up by his collar, only barely through the door of the place (it looks like a prison, or an asylum, and nowhere good), and mutters, “I can tell already you’ll be trouble.”

Jack Kelly is reborn in the fires of the Refuge.

But to be reborn, you have to die.

It begins when he spits in Snyder’s weaselly little face, and Snyder slaps him — _hard_ — and throws him aside.

But Snyder neither forgives nor forgets, and neither does Jack Kelly.

He manages the first few days all right; there are a lot of boys and a couple of girls here in the Refuge, and not many of them are subservient enough to avoid Snyder’s wrath.

Jack, though, Jack isn’t capable of staying out of sight, out of mind.

And Snyder hates him for it.

“You are a  _child_ ,” the man snarls at him when he refuses to obey some order or another.  ” _You will listen.”_

“Maybe when I’m  _dead_ ,” Jack spits back.

That’s when the beatings start.

Jack has never been beaten like this, never been handcuffed to a cot and kicked until his back and his belly are two big bruised masses of flesh, never been left there in agony and unable to breath without pain.

It’s never Snyder himself, but the spectre of the man hangs over everything.

Jack is beaten.  Jack mouthes off, pretends there’s nothing wrong.

But Jack is breaking.  Snyder is winning.  

And that, that more than anything else, is the most painful part of all of it.


End file.
